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Arch Linux released for the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi project has announced the availability of an ARM port of Arch Linux for their low-cost computing platform. The port, which has been in the works for six months, is designed to provide a bare-bones base configuration for advanced users.

The lightweight image does not come with a graphical user interface and is therefore not recommended for beginners, but users can install a desktop environment with a few commands (the release announcement has instructions for installing LXDE). Like the desktop version of Arch Linux, the ARM port is a rolling release distribution with packages being updated relatively frequently.

Arch Linux ARM is available to download for the Raspberry Pi as an SD card image from the project's web site. Users looking for a more complete set of software out of the box might want to consider installing the Debian distribution available from the same download page.